Scripps Howard News Service/courtesy of Orkin, Inc.

About the size of apple seeds, bedbugs often are found in the creases of a mattress or upholstered furniture.

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Decidedly creepy and the very definition of crawly, an army of tiny insects is on the march, infiltrating hidden corners across the country in its insatiable quest to feast on your blood while you sleep.

Yes, America, bedbugs are back.

Largely absent, or at least little noticed, for more than 50 years, these little suckers have now been detected making people miserable in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Since the new millennium began, pest control companies have reported a 70 percent or higher uptick in bedbug calls, and some entomologists predict that rate to continue or even grow.

"No place is immune. No person is immune. The insect has the ability to appear almost at will," said Orkin Inc. Technical Director Frank Meek, who, after being bitten himself by a bedbug in an Orlando, Fla., hotel in 1999, became a pioneer in identifying and combating the resurgence of the pest.

Indeed, in the past year alone, infestations have been found in hotels, motels, apartments, condominiums, town houses and other sites in Albuquerque and scores more cities nationwide.

This year, the miniature vampires have also been discovered in college housing at Boston University, Ohio State University, Stanford University in California and the University of Florida.

Neither Meek nor any other expert can point to a single, definitive reason to why we now find ourselves facing this "invasion of the body snackers," as one witty exterminator dubbed it.

A scourge of mankind since caveman days, the wingless creatures all but disappeared in the United States after World War II, when the widespread use of DDT and other powerful insecticides apparently spelled their doom.

A general shunning of such chemicals in recent times, and a surge in international business and tourism, are most often identified as responsible for the re-emergence, which some say has not yet even peaked.

"It's going to get worse," said University of Kentucky urban entomology professor Michael Potter. "We're in for some very, very interesting times."

Just how interesting will be hard to quantify, however.

No one is counting the number of infestations nationwide. Because the insects are not believed to spread diseases, there is no federal requirement for city or state public health departments to report the number of cases they come across.

Pest control companies provide one of the few gauges available, and they portray a fast-growing market for their services, driven in part by increasing public awareness of the insects, which usually are the size and oval shape of an apple seed, although often flatter.

Industry giant Orkin says "bed bugs" is the No. 1 search term it registers on www.orkincommercial.com and reports that the number of states in which its exterminators have done battle with the bugs jumped from 35 in 2003 to 48 now. (The two missing states are the Dakotas, where Orkin has no outlets, Meek said.)

In Washington, D.C., American Pest Management, a company the White House uses for some of its pest control needs, has seen its revenue from bedbug treatments has soared more than fivefold since 2003, company President Jay Nixon said.

Another unscientific measure of the problem is an assortment of Web sites operated as victim support groups, such as www.bedbugger.com, where the afflicted trade tips and tales of woe.

Travel-related sites such as www.hotelchatter.com and www.tripadvisor.com devote sections to accounts by travelers of the bedbug encounters they have endured in hotels across the United States and overseas.

From these and other sources, a picture emerges of the proliferation of bedbugs - ,and it is not a pleasant one. Many distraught travelers and tenants describe their experiences as life-changing episodes that leave them emotionally scarred, saddled with hundreds of dollars in exterminating bills, perpetually cleaning and scared to sleep or travel. Some report suffering with more than 100 bites.

Listen to "Selma B." of Cincinnati, who moved to escape an infestation:

"I am still freaked about this. I am convinced my new apartment will get infested. To my friends, I compared this to having a fire destroy all of your possessions. What little things you might get to keep, you have to clean it like a crazy person. It's just as devastating as a fire, but a fire doesn't usually come back," she wrote in January on one Web site.

The insects can seem to be everywhere. Among the places harboring them have been hospitals, movie theaters, cruise ships, dry cleaners, Laundromats, moving vans, airplanes, schools and buses. Garage sales and eBay-purchased items also can be a source.

Once inside your life, they make themselves at home not only in mattresses, box springs, closets, drawers and books, but also in children's toys, telephones, shower heads, microwave ovens, radios, speakers and fireplaces.

And they often prove to be extremely difficult to eradicate, even in the swankiest of abodes. Though they carry the unwarranted stigma of filth and seediness, bedbug infestations make no such distinction about their nesting spots and feel quite comfy in all sorts of upscale establishments.

In the past year, for example, guests at luxury hotels in Dallas, New York City and London have reported being bitten by the bugs. Ralph Lauren's Madison Avenue studio reportedly fell victim to the despised insects last September.

Opera soprano Alison Trainer filed a $20 million lawsuit against a Hilton hotel in Phoenix in January, claiming she suffered 150 bites, continuing emotional trauma and weight loss.

And "Saturday Night Live" regular Maya Rudolph sued in November, alleging her $13,500-a-month SoHo condo loft in New York City was crawling with the bugs.

In fact, the spread of the insects has spawned a new area of personal injury litigation. New York City plaintiff's attorney Alan Schnurman is one of the most prominent, and he says there is no shortage of clients.

"We haven't even scratched the surface," he said.